


beyond what sight can prove

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Series: Less than 12 days of Xmas [2]
Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mythology, M/M, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam makes a pilgrimage to ask a favor of the sun.  The sun is not all that impressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beyond what sight can prove

**Author's Note:**

> And when we had come out of the temple, I straightaway left that  
> Blessed City; for I was not too young, and I could read the scripture.
> 
> Kahlil Gibran, "The Blessed City"

The matriarch bundles the offering in a pale sheepskin and passes it to Liam with a blessing. Her hands are wind-chafed and sure under the weight. Winter hangs over the village, the morning sun not yet bright enough through the low clouds to break the bone-deep chill of the night before. Winter will linger here for weeks more if Liam isn't swift and stalwart.

This is no joyous sendoff, for all that it will bring warmth finally back to their muddy, snow-clogged little village. Liam's journey will be three long days, skirting the edge of the frozen marsh and up the round hills to where a lone ash tree grows, where the sun waits for its appeasement. The village offers luxuries it can hardly spare, the spoils of a brief summer spent toiling hard enough to afford this excess. Liam carries the meager value of his village and the hope that it will be enough to bribe the sun's condescension.

In ages past he would have made this trek with the company of other supplicants from all over the land. His cold nights would have been made more pleasant for the cheer of a crowded campfire, the clip and muddle of strange accents, the sharing of his burden. Now Liam trudges through the mire alone, nothing but his own breathing loud in his ears to break the silence. When he stops to rest he eats alone and no one appears in any direction. No matter how long he squints into the distance yet to be crossed, no one comes or goes. The landscape brings no distraction except a wind to set his teeth to chattering.

At night he build a fire and sleeps in fits and starts, so that he can feed more kindling into the too-hungry flames. When he wakes in the morning he eats a rind of bread and meat dried brittle. He fills his water skin where he can, breaking through the ice on the surface of springs and gullies gone all but dry awaiting spring's swelling ice melt. Bleak fare, but he has not come this far for his own pleasure.

On the afternoon of the second day, he climbs the hill. From the top he can see the coast, at this distance only a grey smudge and the faint cry of wheeling birds. He is not likely to ever go any closer than this and he does not feel any particular longing to do so. His people are from the high valley, where the grass grows so green and thick it hides the wind-worn rocks until the flocks are driven, to graze and be fatted.

He cannot imagine the shore, cannot imagine anything so big and flat as the sea. His world is small and sparse and has given him nothing on which to build a picture of such a thing. But the misty uncertainty of it at a distance pleases him far more than it unnerves him. He is not so small as that.

At the crest of the hill, against the hazy view of the sea, there is an ash tree.

In the crook of the ash tree, there is a lad his age, skinny-legged and handsome.

"What're you doing here?" Liam asks, because he's spent so long looking for other people that he can't believe there is one.

"Waiting," the lad responds. He is dressed in good wool beneath his dark fur mantle, a trim of gold stitched into the hem of his tunic to match the hammered bands on his wrists and his thick torc. His trousers are bright red, leggings clean above black swiftlere.

In Liam's village there is a statue of a harvest goddess, a sheath of wheat tucked into the crook of one arm like an infant, a short scythe held in her other hand. It was carved out of wood so long ago that no one remembers who carved it, but they remember her name – Zemyna, at whose feet men lay bundles of bright spring flowers for easy planting and strong backs with which to harvest. Zemyna's head is smooth, hairless, and the women weave crowns of flowers for her, tangling wishes into the stems: easy childbirth and good luck with their long, elegant hunting bows.

Their statue of Zemyna is tall as a real woman, and all the curves of her features are smooth and sweet. Her wrists are thick and strong, the toes of her bare feet spread against her wooden pedestal, as if just about to curl them, as if she is ready to step at any moment – except that she is too lovely to be real, too perfect in all of the details of her composition.

The late morning sun hits the lad sitting in the crook of the ash tree and he is chased bronze, all of his curves and lines lovingly rendered. His eyes spark to gold before he squints into the guarded light and the wave of his dark eyelashes banks the glow. His eyes go back to muddled brown not unlike Liam's.

"Who're you?" the lad asks finally, once the quiet has gone on for a long time. "Are you here to lay an offering?"

Liam sits down beside his bundle of gifts from the village: a dozen iron arrow points, a tooled leather quiver and strap, a wide ribbon torc polished bright and slippery, jars of honey and herbs, a weight of wheat milled dust fine. They are not a wealthy village – they do not weave or dye or hew good metal from the earth. They grow and hunt what they need to get them through the barren winter, brew beer and shear wool enough to trade for what they cannot make.

Liam spreads a sheepskin on which to lay his burden, piece by piece. He places them with care, the way he imagines he is expected to.

"I am Liam," he says. He braces his hands on his knees and bows his head low. "My village is Bacauing. I bring gifts for the sun, reaped in the sun, that you may bask us again in light."

The lad watches him carefully and Liam is not ashamed of the offering he brings, he is proud of his village for this tradition they keep, for these gifts they can afford to spare. But he is aware for the first time of his own meagerness. His rough homespun, the stains on his fur, the thin band of bronze at his throat.

"You think I'm the sun?"

Liam looks up at the lad with gold hidden in his eyes and nods. "I came to the ash tree on the round hill and found you in it."

The lad sits back against the trunk of the ash tree and considers it for a while, his eyes not leaving Liam. He knocks his heel against the ground as he thinks. At long last he turns away to crane his upper body through the V of the tree, then gathers himself up and slithers free onto the ground, a satchel in hand.

He crouches to untie it and spread the contents out across the shaggy black fur. Bowls of hammered bronze. Heavy gold bands for wrist and arm and throat. Delicately made sandals of pale leather. A pile of coins that shine white, the rough likeness of a face stamped into each one. Bundles of dried fruit and bottles of scented oil and the feet of big birds, skin black and scaly, tied up with woven grass braids.

"You see what I have received already," the lad says. "Have you no more to give, Liam of Bacauing?"

"This is all that I have brought."

The lad tips his head to the side, dulled gold gaze sweeping the pile and then Liam's face. "And yourself," he says. "Are you a gift as well?"

Liam does not need to imagine the sky but he cannot imagine living in it. He shakes his head. "My village is small. I am needed there. For planting. For shearing."

"Give me something of you, then. Something you have no need for in planting and shearing." The lad stands and beckons Liam to his feet. He is not as tall as Liam, not as broad under his fine wool and fur. His hair curls very softly at the ends, to mingle with the darkness of his mantle and twine in the sparking gold of his torc.

"I have nothing you could want," Liam says.

"Your mouth. What use have you of that?" the lad asks. He reaches up to touch Liam's face, the wind-sore skin of his cheeks, his brow, the chapped ache of his lips. "Give me this and you will please me very much."

Liam closes his muddy brown eyes and bends his head to press their mouths together.

The slow breaking of the sun through the clouds heats him warm all over.


End file.
